Sale: 533 / Modern Art Day Sale and Gerlinger Collection, Dec. 10. 2022 in Munich Lot 504

 

504
Emil Nolde
Bärtiger Männerkopf im Profil und junges Paar, 1931/1935.
Watercolor and pen drawing with black ink
Estimate:
€ 60,000 / $ 64,800
Sold:
€ 75,000 / $ 81,000

(incl. surcharge)
Bärtiger Männerkopf im Profil und junges Paar. 1931/1935.
Watercolor and pen drawing with black ink.
Signed in lower left. On Japon. 30.5 x 22.9 cm (12 x 9 in), the full sheet.
[AM].
• Watercolor in strong colors from the important series "Phantasien“ that Nolde began in 1931.
• In the "Phantasien", the artist unites figures from fairy tales and sagas, ghosts and grotesque faces to highly characterful compositions.
• Inimitable expressiveness through Nolde's masterly handling of the wet-in-wet watercolor technique.
• Significant provenance: Formerly part of the Sprengel Collection, Hanover
.

Accompanied by a photo expertise from Prof. Dr. Manfred Reuther, Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation Seebüll, from May 6, 2009.

PROVENANCE: Collection Bernhard Sprengel, Hanover.
Private collection Northern Germany (presumably Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin).

EXHIBITION: Emil Nolde. Ausstellung zu Ehren des 80-Jährigen, Galerie Günther Franke, Munich, 1947, cat. no. 17.
Emil Nolde, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover, October/November 1948, cat. no. 66.
Emil Nolde. Gemälde, Aquarelle, Graphik, Städtisches Kunsthaus, Bielefeld, April 1 - 30, 1951, cat. no. 20.
Emil Nolde, Kunsthalle Mannheim, April 20 - May 21, 1952, cat. no. 50.
Emil Nolde, Kunsthalle Kiel, June 22 - July 27, 1952, cat. no. 72.
Sprengel Collection, Kunstverein Hanover, October 10 - November 28, 1965, cat. no. 242 (with illu. p. 174) (titled "Gegensätze“).

Emil Nolde made watercolors that are characterized by an unmatched mastery. Using ink and pen, he draws the outlines of the three figures from the apparently randomly placed dabs of paint. The polychrome approach is based on an artistic freedom that Nolde developed in these years and which would characterize all of his later work. The urge to create, to form the object from the brushstroke and the color, is taken to an extreme in the present work. The color-soaked ground develops an own dynamic with its gentle transitions and requires a descriptive drawing. The emphasis on the painterly is contrasted with the drawn motif and gives the composition its special appeal. When Nolde first presented the "Phantasien" at Ferdinand Möller in Berlin in 1934, they were a sensation, but also subject to controversial discussions. Due to increasing criticism of his "abnormal" and "Negroid" depictions, Nolde, who actually saw himself as a figure painter, increasingly turned to the less incriminating landscape and flower depictions. From 1938 Nolde withdrew himself more and more and painted his "unpainted pictures", the creative basis for which can be found in the compositional solutions he had worked out in the "Phantasien". [AM]



504
Emil Nolde
Bärtiger Männerkopf im Profil und junges Paar, 1931/1935.
Watercolor and pen drawing with black ink
Estimate:
€ 60,000 / $ 64,800
Sold:
€ 75,000 / $ 81,000

(incl. surcharge)